Long Road to Survival: The Prepper Series

by Lee Bradford

  “I feel bad for you, Buck, I really do. You live in this paranoid universe where every man, woman, and child is conspiring against you. Have you thought for a second that maybe part of your problem is you? Sure, maybe sometimes I’m a little too trusting, but at least I haven’t cut myself off from the entire human race. ‘No man is an island,’ Buck. Ever heard that expression? I’ve never met a man who needed to hear it more.”

  After that, the two men fell into an uncomfortable silence, both breathing heavily as though they’d gone extra rounds in some sparring match. They hadn’t been driving for more than a few miles and already they’d nearly torn each other to shreds. This was shaping up to be the road trip from Hell.

  Chapter 9

  In Atlanta, Susan Edwards stood staring out onto Edgewood Avenue. With the power out and no means of turning on the television, the noise from the growing crowd gathered outside was becoming louder and louder. At this stage, the mob wasn’t demanding food and water, nor were they looting stores. All they demanded was information on what was going on. Although she couldn’t see the riot police, Susan could hear them over the loudspeakers, asking people to remain calm and to return to their homes.

  Less than an hour ago, Susan and Autumn had been outside with them. Most of the people gathered were students from Georgia State and so the two women had felt a certain amount of safety. They had gathered for the same reason that the demonstrators were still there; they wanted to know what was going on. At some point there was even talk of a march on the Mayor’s office where they would demand to be heard. Surely if anyone in the city knew what was going on, it would be him.

  The cops were telling people that it wasn’t safe to be outside, that radiation levels would be on the rise and that they should return to their homes and wait for instructions from the authorities. Not surprisingly, this didn’t sit well with most people. Waiting at home for the government to save you was practically a death sentence.

  Perhaps the real reason for the march had been rumors about secret bomb shelters hidden somewhere underneath the Mayor’s office. He was hiding there right now with his family and a lucky few handpicked followers. There was no way to prove any of this and the more Susan heard the talk as it circulated from person to person, the more she could see they were starting to take it as fact. It reminded her of that old adage that you could believe a lie if you told it to yourself often enough.

  At one point the police had lobbed teargas into the crowd, and that was when Susan and Autumn had decided they’d had enough. They’d retreated to Autumn’s new sixth-floor apartment, the one the two women had come here to decorate in the first place.

  “We need to rent a car and get out of here,” Autumn said from the kitchen. The fear in her voice was becoming more and more apparent. Her shoulder-length brown hair hung limply, her delicate features puffy, as though she’d been crying.

  Susan had learned from her father long ago that losing yourself in panic was what made bad decisions seem like sensible courses of action. The allure was strong, stitched into our DNA over millennia, but the consequences were disastrous.

  All you needed to do was look down at the surging crowd below as they tried to protect themselves from yet another wave of teargas. The police would eventually manage to disperse them, but how many would be hurt or killed before that was accomplished?

  “We can’t rent a car, Autumn,” Susan said, glancing back at her daughter. In many ways, the two women looked nothing alike—Susan, tall and thin with fiery red hair and soft creamy skin; her daughter, several inches shorter, with an olive complexion and a sporty build. Autumn had decided on Georgia State after trying out and making the Panthers women’s soccer team. She was a striker and hoped to someday turn pro and play in the National Women’s Soccer League. The salary wouldn’t be anything close to the men’s pro sports franchises, but you could make a living and what did it matter when you were pursuing your passion?

  For her part, in college, Susan had studied finance, but married young. First to Kevin Thorp as soon as they turned eighteen and then a couple years after his death to Paul. The birth of Autumn had sidelined her dreams of getting an MBA and working for one of the big banks. In the end, she’d gotten a job at the credit union, but her own shortcomings had fueled her commitment to see her daughter follow through. Up until now, Susan had done her best to ensure boys didn’t get in the way. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that her daughter’s goals would be dashed by something else entirely—an attack on their country so much worse than 9/11.

  “There must be rental places that are still open,” Autumn pleaded.

  Susan turned, for good now. She was done looking out that window. “And how are we gonna pay?”

  “You have money, don’t you?”

  In many ways, her daughter was becoming a woman, but in others, she still thought in childish ways. “I’ve got credit cards and an ATM card, but how do you expect me to use them when there’s no power? Even if we could, I’m sure the banks have frozen everything to prevent people from liquidating their accounts.”

  “But they can’t do that, can they?”

  Susan went to her daughter and gently brought her to the couch. Outside they could still hear screams and shouts from the crowd. She looked down at her iPhone for probably the thirtieth time today and saw that she wasn’t getting any signal. Something told her that this was the new reality and that the battery in her eight-hundred-dollar device would slowly drain away, never to be revived again. She turned it off to keep the charge as long as possible.

  “You know I spoke with your father earlier, right before the signal died out. He told us to stay put, said he was coming to get us. I think that’s exactly what we should do.”

  Almost on cue, the cacophony of sounds from outside grew louder and Susan wondered how long they’d be able to hold out before things got out of hand, and whether Paul had any real chance of reaching them.

  Chapter 10

  Buck and Paul were closing in on the two-hundred-mile mark and things were starting to look up. After sitting in silence for a while, watching endless rows of corn flicker by, the two men had started to talk. It was Paul who reached out first, not from any desire to concede the truth of any of the accusations Buck had flung at him. He was responding to the voice of his deceased mother who seemed to always whisper into his ear whenever he faced a difficult situation.

  He could still picture her standing by the Steinway piano, singing softly while his father played Verdi’s La Traviata. “Anger is just another way of calling for help,” she liked to say. Paul wasn’t entirely sure Buck wanted or needed any help, but if they were going to be sitting beside one another for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, it behooved them to at least act civil.

  The conversation had started out awkwardly enough, with Paul talking about the weather. A bout of late August heat was sweltering outside. To conserve fuel, they weren’t using the air conditioning and instead had the windows down. At Paul’s feet was the Geiger counter, which he turned on every so often at Buck’s urging to check radiation levels. It was a CVD-715, an old Civil Defense unit from the Cold War, powered by a single D battery. Paul flipped the switch and turned the knob to X10 as instructed by Buck. The needle jumped and then settled at the number two.

  “Is that high?” Paul asked.

  Buck nodded. “It ain’t good. I’d be more comfortable if it were less than one.”

  Setting the device at his feet, Paul went for the radio, turning through the radio dial, listening to static.

  “I’m not as useless with guns as you think I am,” Paul offered, still hoping to find a signal and some much-needed news.

  Buck glanced over briefly and grunted.

  “Sure, I grew up in New York City, but an uncle on my father’s side owned a farm about an hour out of Manhattan. We used to head up there for the weekends once in a while. Mother wasn’t much for the rustic life. She’d come from a long line of diplomats.” Paul saw he was los
ing the old man. “Anyway, somehow my uncle helped convince my father to buy me a Daisy BB gun for my birthday. You know, the one with the lever at the bottom you needed to cock.”

  “Winchester 94 replica.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I was told I could only shoot paper targets. See, the gun stayed at the farm and if I was good, they’d let me take it out whenever we visited. I was supervised at first, since everyone knew that guns were dangerous, whether or not they shot real bullets. But after a few visits the rules started to slacken. You know how it goes. Mom, Dad, and Uncle Paul were in the house, drinking wine, laughing at jokes I was too young to understand. And there I was plunking away at my targets when along comes this big fat rabbit hopping around, like it was trying to tease me. It was practically screaming: ‘Betcha can’t hit me. Betcha can’t hit me.’

  “That’s when I had a real bright idea. I knew exactly what we should have for dinner that night. I swung my Daisy around, laid my sights over that little bugger and squeezed the trigger. I must have hit it square in the head ’cause it stopped moving. Went right over and picked it up by the back legs, brought it into the house with the biggest grin on my face. Rifle in one hand, rabbit in the other. I felt like a real man, providing for his family.”

  The hint of a smile was beginning to form on Buck’s face. “I think I know where this is going.”

  “My mom was the first one to scream. ‘You killed Mr. Fluffy,’ my uncle cried.”

  Buck’s big belly began to gyrate with laughter. “Mr. Fluffy.” Stories that highlighted wimpy city folk crying over hunting and eating wild meat were right up his alley.

  Paul was cackling too now. “‘I can’t believe you killed Mr. Fluffy,’” he repeated. “Oh, boy, was my uncle pissed.” Paul wiped tears of laughter from the edges of his eyes. “Lost my Daisy and haven’t fired a shot since. So I guess that makes me a certified killer.”

  “First Blood, part zero.” Buck could barely get it out as his thick arms swerved to stay on the road.

  They were both still chuckling when the Hummer passed a black sedan pulled off on the side of Interstate 29. In the split second before they rocketed past, Paul saw a mother and her daughter standing a few yards off the road, using a broken umbrella for shade against the blazing sun. This was farm country and along this stretch trees were few and far between. A man stood near the back of the sedan flashing a sign which read, “Out of Gas.”

  Paul swiveled in his chair and watched them before they disappeared. The mother and daughter made him think of Susan and Autumn.

  “I think we should go back,” Paul said.

  “Go back for what?” That crotchety look was back.

  “To help those people, Buck. It’s sizzling out there. Didn’t you see he had a wife and kid?”

  “We don’t have enough for ourselves as it is.”

  “Well, I’m not saying we should fill his tank to the brim, but maybe we coulda stopped and at least given him enough to make it there himself.”

  “We’ve been lucky so far, Paul. Not sure if you realize that or not. I expected these highways to be swarming with people heading for whatever they thought of as safety. That family back there, before long they’re just gonna be the tip of the iceberg, mark my word.”

  “So what? They needed our help. If you were stuck with an empty tank, wouldn’t you want someone to lend a hand?”

  Buck tore off his cap and used his forearm to wipe sweat off his brow. “If I’m dumb enough to be caught with my pants down like that, then I deserve whatever I get. They don’t call it prepping for nothing, Paul. Most of these folks don’t know the first thing about living off the grid and making ready for the worst. Just you wait. I’m telling you. Things are gonna get a whole lot worse before they get better.”

  “You ever heard of karma, Buck? What goes around comes around?”

  “Do you want to save your wife and kid or not?” Buck shot back, an angry hue forming in his puffy cheeks.

  “Of course I do, but how can we call ourselves Christians and just pass them by?”

  Buck cocked an eyebrow. “You ain’t a Christian.”

  “What do you mean?” To Paul, faith was a personal thing, but being called out by a man who couldn’t be bothered to help a fellow human being in need couldn’t go unchallenged. “Who are you to question me?”

  “Were you baptised as a kid?”

  Paul hesitated. “Not as a kid, but I don’t see why that matters. I was raised by secular parents. They believed that music and art were God’s fingerprint. Hey, we lived in New York City. Fact, I never even set foot in a church until I met your daughter. When things became serious, she asked if I’d become a practicing Christian. We had a ceremony where I was baptised.”

  “Susan never said anything about that.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t. It was probably during one of those periods when the two of you weren’t speaking. There’s a lot about your daughter you don’t know, Buck.”

  “Well, I know she lied to me.”

  “She withheld, it’s not the same thing.”

  “It is as far as I’m concerned. Was bad enough you were a philandering rock star. If I’d known you were an imposter too, I’d have never allowed that marriage to take place.”

  Paul laughed sardonically. “In another life, you’d have made a fine dictator.”

  Buck glanced over, not entirely sure if it was a compliment or not.

  They argued back and forth for several more minutes, Paul waiting the entire time for Buck’s conscience to kick in and compel him to turn the Hummer around. But that didn’t happen.

  Chapter 11

  A few miles on, Buck looked down at the fuel gauge and cursed under his breath. Glancing over, Paul saw that they were down to a quarter tank. Simple math made it clear they wouldn’t get all the way to Atlanta without needing to refill, even with the jerry cans.

  It was always better to fill up the main tank first and keep the rest in reserve in case they ran into problems. Buck had spent close to ten minutes explaining all of this to Paul as the latter searched through the assortment of roadmaps Buck kept in his glove compartment. A GPS would have made far more sense, but Buck was sure the government used them as tracking devices.

  Paul’s initial impulse to whip out his mobile phone and search on Google Maps for a service station died the minute he realized there was no more Internet. Tracing a finger along the map, he said: “All right, so we’re on Interstate 29, heading south. Seems to me we’re right on the outskirts of Kansas City.”

  “What’s that over there?” Buck asked.

  He was pointing at a sign which read: Platte City.

  Paul had never heard of it, but it meant there was probably a gas station up ahead. Whether they could get any gas given the lack of power was another issue entirely.

  “You sure you know where we need to go once we hit Atlanta?” Buck asked.

  Paul fished into his pocket and produced a scrap of paper with Autumn’s name and address written down in blue pen. “160 Edgewood, apartment 603. Corner of Edgewood and Piedmont Avenue. I wrote it down before we left. Like I said, I was there before to help her build more IKEA furniture than I care to see again.”

  Buck tsked. “You gave her that cheap foreign crap?”

  Paul nodded. “It’s her first place. She certainly isn’t going to get anything from Hellman-Chang. Flew in about a week ago. Spent a long weekend, eating pizza and working our fingers to the bone. Susan stayed at home for that part. Not that she didn’t want to help, but it was our schedules. We must have criss-crossed in the air afterwards. Me flying home and her heading to Atlanta to begin adding the feminine touches.” Paul grew quiet for a moment. “Anyway, I’m sure if I we can find a map from this century then I’ll be able to get us there. If you weren’t so paranoid the government was tracking people through their GPS, this would have gone a lot smoother.” He studied Autumn’s address again, trying not to let the sentimentality get the better of him. After a moment he shove
d it back into his pocket.

  A short time later the traffic on the interstate had grown heavier. Most of the cars were heading out of the city, but even so, their numbers weren’t nearly what Buck had predicted they would be. He’d sworn the cities would empty out as panic set in. He’d read articles and seen programs on TV about how when folks got scared they reverted to a herd-type mentality.

  Paul didn’t doubt there was some truth to Buck’s assertion, but in that big ol’ theory there was one thing he was forgetting. Fear could also keep people frozen in place. How many had needed to be rescued during Katrina because they’d refused to leave their homes? The roads were quietest right before and right after a storm.

  No doubt things would pick up. But that wouldn’t begin until folks began running low on food and water. They still probably believed that help was on the way.

  The nuclear detonations that in a flash had obliterated millions of square miles and just as many lives didn’t feel real for the majority of people living far from the coast. Few if any had seen any mushroom clouds or bright flashes of light. A few minutes of a breaking news report along with a major power outage was thus far the extent of their exposure. Things would get worse. But how and when?

  Those thoughts were still making tight, frantic circles through Paul’s head when he spotted a Gasmart and Phillips 66 station. They pulled off. Again, the light traffic flowing into the city meant all the pumps were free.

  Buck hopped out and stretched his arms over his head till something popped.